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As anyone here at M5 knows Dan loves contests. Well Christina Hernandez interviewed Dan for Smart Money's Pure Genius series on how games are used at M5 to make company projects more fun. I'd make a contest about who has the best game story of their own- but that might be too meta.

People come to us because typically they compete on service and they do it over the phones. Service is revenue to them. We’re a service company. In telecom, there’s no great service company. That’s what we’re trying to build. Great service starts with happy employees. Danny Meyer, his line is: Take care of the employees and they’ll take care of the customers. So getting that engagement and that energy and that knowledge into the staff is a service strategy. We’ve invented and played with a lot of games. They’re not frivolous games. They’re games that bring people closer to our clients. They reinforce the core values of the company. They build teamwork. They make it fun to work here. The recession was a wonderful time and an important time to do this kind of thing.

We have games around sales leads. We have games around calling clients and checking in with them. We have games around fixing operational problems and we have games around culture. It is a way to unlock some productivity at work.